Mickadeit: More gun laws not answer

If only it were so easy as new restrictions on guns to make the horror stop.

Problem 1. Proliferation. Banning assault rifles would not stop it. Assault rifles may have been present and used at the scene of many of the mass shootings, but so were semi-automatic pistols, which have been produced in this country for more than 100 years.

Even if you could outlaw any weapon that had a re-chambering capability of, say, less than three seconds, which would decrease the carnage, there are so many millions of semi-automatic handguns, hunting rifles and shotguns in private ownership that a ban on production and sales would be virtually no bar to acquiring them on the black market.

Problem 2. The Second Amendment. What if the government passed a law confiscating all such weapons? Per the Fifth Amendment, taxpayers would have to compensate the owners. Given our current mood, this country might go for that.

But just two years ago, the Supreme Court on a 5-4 vote said the Second Amendment barred states from restricting handguns so heavily that it amounted to a ban. Four years before that, it barred Congress from doing the same. Thus, not only is confiscation unconstitutional, but so is virtually any outright ban on guns.

There are only two ways this will change: 1) one of the older justices in the majority, most likely Anthony Kennedy or Antonin Scalia, retires in the next four years and is replaced with a more liberal justice, or 2), a new constitutional amendment repeals the Second Amendment and bans gun ownership.

Kennedy and Scalia will hang on with every measure of strength they have to keep a Democrat from appointing their successors. Odds are, they'll outlast the Obama presidency, putting any substantive change in this area at least four years away.

A constitutional amendment is beyond daunting. Two-thirds of the House and the Senate? Three-fourths of the states? There is a reason only 17 amendments have passed in 221 years, and none remotely as divisive as a proposed gun ban since an alcohol ban was ratified (1919) and repealed (1933). Some constitutional scholars believe no constitutional amendment will ever pass again.

But let's say the court does reinterpret the Second Amendment, or somehow the Second Amendment is repealed and a confiscation-and-compensation law is passed. Then we're back to problem 1. If even a small percentage of owners refuse to comply, the law would simply drive up the cost of an illicit gun. The obsessively disturbed – they'd still get them.

I don't believe any legally, politically or practically viable solution involves more gun laws. Do you? Email me. Please address how you'd get around problems 1 and 2.